EURIAS - 2014

Excavations at an expropriated estate in Eurias, Arkadia (owned by the Greek Ministry of Culture), and another estate in Evrias (purportedly owned by K. Zorgias), as part of the Archaeological Project of Notia Kynouria. Grigoris Grigorakakis (ΛΘ’ ΕΠΚΑ) and Andreas Tsatsaris (Τ.Ε.Ι. Αθήνας) report on excavations of remnants of two Archaic-era buildings.

Excavations at an expropriated site at Evrias were resumed, further revealing some archaeological remnants of the building’s leftovers (Fig. 1). It contained debris and vessel fragments, as well as foundations of houses that constituted a town during the Archaic era. A 4x4m square was excavated just over the site’s N sector, which revealed a stone-made water-well’s spout (Fig. 2) adjacent to the building’s N edge. Animal bones, pre-mid-fourth century BC ceramics, and parts of burnt wood were uncovered. The most important find within the building was a tomb (Fig. 3) with a tiled roof. The corpse was laid on his back, his head was facing N, and it can be traced back to the Late Antiquity. A similarly-structured tomb with a corpse facing the same direction was discovered at Agiorgitika, Arkadia in a certain place called Gournes-Grallos. Some elements of the site’s foundations were unearthed indicating an Archaic-era provenance, while some eighth to seventh-century BC ceramics were found in the S sector (Fig. 4). These early ceramics are connected to the development of an important urban centre, a city-state, related to the two shrines dedicated to Apollo at Kosmas and Tyros.

Excavations at a site purportedly owned by K. Zorgias were extended N and S, and the main finds were the edifice’s Mycenaean layer (the stratigraphy reveals that the location was inhabited from the protogeometric times until at least the Archaic era), Archaic-era debris, and a structure used for processing metals. This structure was connected to settling, deposition (Fig. 5) and containment tanks (Fig. 6). The settling tank contained some Hellenistic ceramics (long petal bowl). The containment one’s sheer size only allowed partial excavations up to a depth of 3.60m; its diameter measured 2.70m at the time of publication. It accommodated high-quality ceramics of the Archaic era throughout, whereas in the N and S parts of the tank Late Hellenistic (first century BC) and Roman ceramics (first and second century AD) were unearthed. The main outcome was the rejection of the initial hypothesis that the site was deployed in agricultural work; conversely, it is linked to the processing of metals.

[Entry created by M. Androulakakis]